Pareidolia is the phenomenon of recognizing patterns, shapes, and familiar objects in a vague and sometimes random stimulus, says RationalWiki.org. Faces are thought to be the most common things seen as an effect of pareidolia.

Photo taken by Fahrusha on November 15,2018

Multiple faces can be seen beside the cat witch nightlight.

Photo taken by Fahrusha on December 8, 2018

This is a shadow caused by towels hung on a hook in a bathroom. Seeing these faces while alone in a quiet place can be somewhat unsettling to the average person. Each individual must decide for herself where pareidolia ends and anomalous experiences begin.

An amusing case of precognition occurred while I was attempting to get some exercise this past Sunday. I was walking with a companion around a half mile plus Rundgang around a large pond or small lake. To break the monotony, I sometimes make up silly simple songs to sing softly to keep myself amused. These ditties are generally very absurd stream of consciousness numbers like:

Emergen-cy

Brain surgery

Is not for me.

Is not for me!

At a particular point on the path and out of no where, I began to sing:

Doggie treats are good to eat

For me and you

And doggies too.

Eat some doggie treats today.

Woof woof. Yum yum!

Granted, this is nonsensical and silly but exercise for the sake of exercise can be mind numbingly boring. I stopped singing and continued to walk around the path sometimes pumping my arms for extra exercise benefits. When I got around the lake to the same place where I had been singing my impromptu doggie treats song about 20 minutes earlier, there stood a tiny elderly lady in a winter coat, Hello Kitty pajama bottoms and an unusual thick embroidered helmet hat. Very elfin. She was with a younger man who could have been her son. In her hand she had a pouch of dog treats and was handing them out to two smartly attired Scottie dogs who were walking with a woman on the path. None of those people or dogs were present during my earlier circumnavigation. The elfish pixie and her companion continued to walk very slowly around the body of water and stopped twice more to give other dogs some treats.

The key to this precognitive event, I think, is the use of my stream of consciousness for the silly songs, freeing up my mind. What made it memorable was the fey and whimsical appearance of the little lady who was well under five feet tall.

There is a lot of discussion in the media about gender dysphoria. This blog post does not intend to make light of the subject, but this post is largely not about gender dysphoria. Tangentially it does play a small part. I was listening to an interview with a prominent paranormal thinker who noticed that oftentimes psychic readers, professional intuitives, and paranormal practitioners come from the population of marginalized individuals and communities. He particularly mentioned those in the LGBTQ community and the gender dysphoric. This may be true, but a large number of readers and psychics I am acquainted with are straight females, myself included. But this is not the actual topic of this post. And a hearty welcome to those intuitives from that community!

On a page on FaceBook, I made some disparaging remark about the destructiveness of the human race on the planet Earth. I was not faulting any particular person or group. A man with whom I am vaguely familiar, shot back at me something to the effect that he was tired of all the self-flagellating whiners like me. This surprised me deeply, not because he was critical of my stance, I rather expect that. It surprised me because it revealed something to me about myself, of which I was not so acutely aware. Something that I doubt he could have imagined. I did not think I was self-flagellating in the least because somewhere in my mind I do not identify with being human. I do identify with being in an animal body. I eat and like to have shelter and have sexual thoughts like humans and other mammals. I speak a human language but have as much kinship with cats and trees as humans. I also have what appears to be a human body and I often wear clothes. I wish all humans well and sincerely hope for a positive solution to human problems, but I don’t think that it looks at all promising. I have thought to blame my Neanderthal genes for seeing humans as destructive, but confidantes have laughed at that. It does make some sense to me that ancestral memories of Cro-Magnons invading and destroying the lifestyle of some of my predecessors could be a cause. This could jibe with seeing humans as “others”. By the way, one of those confidantes refers to himself as a Yeti (you know who you are). 🙂

Others have kindly suggested that perhaps this species dysphoria is because I am highly evolved spiritually. Personally I doubt it. Although I do think I subscribe to Robert Monroe’s primary statement, “You are more than your physical body.” And I do appreciate the approach of some North American indigenous people in envisioning other species as brothers and sisters and seeing the environment as sacred.

So many people who align themselves with spirituality or religion view things from a human-only point of view, seeking to reach an anthropomorphic Godhead of some sort, believing that a Supreme One somehow sets mankind on some evolutionary pinnacle as more important than other terrestrial beings. They also think that if angels or extraterrestrials or discarnate beings exist, that those beings wish to communicate specifically and only with humans. This hubris astounds me. Perhaps they’d rather communicate with rocks.

I think a whole lot more could be learned about paranormal phenomena if seen from a position that is non-species specific. We all operate some of the time on a subjective basis; the “it’s all about me” stance that some never have moved beyond, ever. So it is natural that as a group humans might view all intelligent paranormal phenomena as being about humans and directed towards humans. Now conversely, I do think that it is highly possible that some paranormal phenomena originates with individuals (human or animal or plant or non-respirating), but please note that a substantial portion of those humans in the modern era, who have displayed psychokinetic abilities, attribute them to extraterrestrials. Make of that what you wish.

Is this post somewhat tongue in cheek? I’m not sure and neither are you.

Fahrusha is an intuitive reader and co-host of “Shattered Reality Podcast.”

Like this:

The day was so cold I wasn’t sure I’d make it to yoga class. I was in the bathroom washing and getting dressed while planning my strategy. If I wasn’t ready in time I’d have to go to the gym instead and be bored senseless on the treadmill.

My mind wandered. I started thinking about making a headband. The best way might be to crochet one in an alternating rib stitch. That would give it a bit of elasticity and keep my hair off my face and my ears warm. What color should it be? Maybe close to my hair color which is a light auburn brown. Would I ever get the time to do such a thing? I continued musing that I used to do such things fairly regularly. Where does my time go nowadays?

I was out the door in plenty of time to make the yoga class, in fact I was there before the teacher. A young woman with cropped black hair walked in two minutes later. Bizarrely she was wearing the very same hair band that I had a half hour prior considered making, crocheted in an alternating rib stitch in a muted brick red. I asked her if she had crocheted herself and she looked at me as though I might be slightly daft and mumbled something about her mother. She was clearly uninterested in chatting with me about it, which was okay, but I was a bit blown away. This was clearly not a commercially common head band but the very one I had imagined making.

This is the kind of thing that happens to me on a regular basis and I don’t often write about. Was it synchronicity, intention or precognition? I honestly don’t know and am not sure if the word matters. It is what makes everyday life magical.

Fahrusha is an intuitive reader and co-host of “Shattered Reality Podcast.”

The levitation of Daniel Dunglas Home, interpreted in a lithograph from Louis Figuier, Les Mystères de la science 1887.

In March 2016, “Shattered Reality Podcast” welcomed guest Michael Grosso, PhD to talk about his book, The Man Who Could Fly, which details the story of St. Joseph of Copertino’s very well documented levitations. It reignited an long time interest of mine on the subject.

The account I am about to relate happened about 5 am one morning when I was a child of about seven. I slept in a small bedroom off the kitchen of a two family house in urban NJ. I was sometimes afflicted with issues during the night involving intense vibrations in my head and the feeling that “others” were in my room attempting to pull me out of my body. It was terrifying. I was on my back lying in bed in the midst of one of these “visitations”. The back of my head and my shoulders were on the bed, but my feet, legs and derriere were being lifted on at least a 45 degree angle from the bed. I was literally paralyzed with terror.

Suddenly my father turned the light on in the kitchen. He was a shipyard worker and got up early to be at work. BANG! I fell back hard onto the surface of the bed. He heard me fall and yelled something to the effect of “What the hell was that?” and ripped open the vinyl folding door to see if I was OK. I was now fully awake and totally shocked by what happened. This could be categorized as a non-volitional partial levitation. I personally categorized it as several moments of blind visceral terror.

Levitation is said to be a form of psychokinesis in which people or objects are lifted into the air without physical support and may hang suspended or float about unaided. But if the levitation is non-volitional, who is causing the psychokinesis? This blogpost concerns human levitation.

There have been a number of documented cases of levitation throughout history, with the best documented happening within the Catholic Church. Michael Grosso points out that the reason for this is that the Roman Catholic Church keeps meticulous records, due to its connection to the Roman Empire, which also kept very good records. St. Joseph of Copertino’s numerous levitations happened indoors and out in front of thousands of witnesses over the course of years and were an embarrassment to the Church.

More recently in history we have a number of accounts of levitation by Scottish mystic and medium, Daniel Dunglas Home. Home, who lived from March 20 1833 until June 21 1886, was active in both the United States, Great Britain and Europe. He was one of eight siblings and a sickly child (as was St. Joseph of Copertino). As a child and adolescent Home had many portentious dreams of the deaths of people he knew.

Of particular interest to me is that Home spent much of his adolescence in the same area of the world (upstate NY) as the Fox sisters of Spiritualist fame and Joseph Smith, mystical founder of the Mormon religion, during the same general time frame. This area is well known for UFO sightings in the latter half of the 20th into the 21 Centuries.

There is much speculation as to whether Home actually levitated. The debunkers are very busy concocting ways that Home could have achieved his levitations, which were witnessed by hundreds of people, some of whom were leading scientists of the day, such as Sir William Crookes. One thing is true: just because something can be done by trickery does not mean that it was done by trickery. In any case, Home’s levitation was volitional levitation, that is, he chose to levitate. And levitate he did, on two continents, indoors and out.

One rather recent case of levitation happened in England to an 11 year old girl named Janet. This occurred in conjunction with the Enfield poltergeist activity in and around 1977. The case was documented by Colin Wilson in his book Poltergeist: A Study in Destructive Haunting. The poltergeist activity centered around a family with four children, but Janet was the one who levitated. Many unusual phenomena that run counter to the current theories of physics were reported in this case. It is thought that Janet’s levitation was not consciously volitional.

There are many cases of Eastern mystics who have purported to levitate, though these reports have not been documented to the satisfaction of Western standards. However, the reports are consistent and plentiful to the extent that there is even a yoga siddhi (paranormal gift) for levitation called laghima (weightlessness) which can be attained through meditation and breathing exercises (pranayama).

So who is likely to levitate?: children, saints and mystics. My conclusion is that in order to levitate one must believe that such a thing is possible. In today’s intellectual Weltanschaung filled with scientism and “Laws” of physics that are really theories, an average adult in the thrall of the mainstream mindset is unlikely to levitate. This is because of the rigidly held belief that it is impossible to do so. This rigid belief when held by a million minds can even affect the one mind that sincerely believes levitation can occur. Therefore a paradigm shift may be necessary before humans can routinely levitate.

On a more personal level, when I am in the midst of a lucid dream, I often find myself gliding around about 8 to 15 inches above the ground, sometimes through walls, surprising people I encounter. In one particularly vivid instance, I was levitating in front of a small group of people at what seemed to be an art gallery. It had happened rather spontaneously and I was not putting on a demonstration. I recall the feeling of first becoming aloft was rather like pushing off from the wall of a swimming pool. The funny thing that happened in this dream is that one of the onlookers called in a group of parapsychologists to investigate. When these four august gentlemen arrived I thudded back to the floor, unable to rise even an inch.

My levitation meditation: Lie flat on your back in a dark or dimly lit room. You can lie on a yoga mat on the floor or on a firm bed without a pillow. You should not be cold, nor should you be weighed down by quilts. I advise wearing non-constricting cotton knit pajamas or the like and covering oneself with a flannel sheet. Your arms should be by your sides but not touching your sides with palms face up in the manner of the yoga position Shivasana or corpse pose. Your eyes should be closed. Your breathing should be deep and consistent. Starting from your feet relax each part of your body consecutively, moving up to your head and ending with relaxing your brain. Notice then if any part of your body is cold. If so, concentrate on that body part, feeling it tingling and getting warmer. Now that you are relaxed, become aware of the plane of your body which is touching the floor or surface beneath you. Become aware of exactly where your body is touching the surface, and become aware that there is something that is neither the surface nor your body but a separate strata that is neither your body nor the surface. Concentrate your awareness on that strata that is neither the surface nor your body and feel that strata becoming thicker and your body becoming lighter. Continue in this manner for as long as you are able. You may then fall asleep or continue to meditate or gently rouse yourself from the meditation by counting downward from 10 to 1, with 1 being the state of total wakefulness.

Fahrusha is a professional intuitive and co-host of “Shattered Reality Podcast”.

I have been writing this blog for over 8 years and this has been the longest time I have gone without writing a post. Last year I started Shattered Reality Podcast with co-host Kate Valentine and sound engineer Bill Moraites. Somehow this venture has eaten up a lot of my writing time.

For those who have not listened to Shattered Reality Podcast this post may serve as a guide to the individual programs you might be interested in hearing up to the December 2015 broadcast. There are shows about all manner of anomalies and parapsychological studies and experiences. The highlighted links will bring you to the audios for each podcast. The podcast is also available at http://shatteredrealitypodcast.com and http://shatteredrealitypodcast.wordpress.com. We are putting the shows up on iTunes as well and there are more than ten up there already.

The first show we did over a year ago featured veteran radio personality Don Ecker and we talked about Moon anomalies. Don has been hosting Dark Matters Radio for a number of years and is well known in the UFO community.

Podcast #2 examined the book “Walking Through Walls” by Philip Smith about his father, Lew Smith, the psychic healer, and life in Miami in the mid twentieth century.

Our next guest was Mack Maloney a prolific writer of military fiction and two very accessible books about UFOs: Beyond Area 51 and UFOs in Wartime.

Mathematician and aerospace engineer Robert Schroeder (Podcast#4) wrote a book about the physics of how UFOs may be propelled called Solving The UFO Enigma: How Modern Physics is Revealing the Technology of UFOs.

Natalie Sudman’s account of being blown up in Iraq and having an out of body and near death experience makes for a must listen show.

Next we were joined by Albert Rosales who has amassed the world’s largest collection of humanoid sightings.

The first article comes from the BBC and is entitled: Earth ‘entering new extinction phase’-US study. This article, frankly, makes all other news reports irrelevant and unimportant by comparison. You should click the link and read it for yourself, but briefly it outlines a Stanford, Princeton, and Berkeley study that states that Earth has begun the sixth mass extinction which will put an end to human kind and all large mammals, most birds and amphibians, due to human overpopulation, destruction of ecosystems and global warming. The loss of bees is particularly important. It is a very bleak picture indeed.

It is articles like this and being bombarded with news stories of humans perpetrating unconscionable acts on other humans, companion animals and the ecosystem that makes me frequently disgusted with, disappointed in, and wanting no part of the species to which I apparently belong. This is obviously not a good state of mind to be in, especially since it is most healthy to exist in a mental space of unconditional love. I spend much of my focused meditation time on projecting unconditional love to Our Planet Earth and the Sun and to numerous animal and plant species.

The second article: Evidence Group Consciousness May Have a Physical Effect on the World gives a little hope. Referencing the Roger Nelson’s PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) studies with Random Event Generators, this article points out that individuals can have a physical effect on the generators, couples exert a larger effect and groups of cohesive individuals can have the biggest effect recorded. Please read this excellent article by Daniel Lew to better understand Random Number Generators and Random Event Generators.

Roger Nelson, Ph.D. Head of the Global Consciousness Project (courtesy of noosphere.princeton.edu)

The idea that we as a group could have a tangible effect on physical reality may be mind boggling to some, but it is also the predictible flowering of the fruit of quantum mechanics. Though the PEAR lab at Princeton closed a few years ago, Roger Nelson has continued with his work now called The Global Consciousness Project. This may be the most important consciousness research going on in the world right now and our last best hope to save ourselves. I personally want to learn more about it and so should you.

Addendum: This article in no way means to imply that every human on Earth should not do her and his best to be as ecologically aware as possible to preserve our environment the Earth.

Update:

Fahrusha and Kate Valentine are proud to present Dr. Roger Nelson, former research director at PEAR Lab and head of the Global Consciousness Project.

Fahrusha is an intuitive reader, teacher of creative visualization, and co-host of the popular Shattered Reality Podcast. She welcomes comments on this blog. She can also be reached at: fahrusha@fahrusha.com

At a private meditation group last night I was having trouble getting into the zone. My body was aching a bit and the habits of my monkey mind were disturbing me. One habit in particular that I had observed before was the mind as commentator with the purpose of remembering the experience. How does one still the mind and yet remember the experience? This particular meditation group sometimes has guided meditation or meditation with a goal or mental trip involved and participants are encouraged to share their experiences. (more…)